Darkness of the Flame
by Lowlife Swaggy Suzi
Summary: A sister series to When the Owl Met Water. (Set twelve years after ROK) King Perseus has been long dead, the High Prince, Xavius, thrown into the dungeons to die. King Luke is the ruler of Ancient Greece, now, and with a brutal hand he strikes fear all over the country. Emery is a fiery young man, with the idea that it is his destiny to destroy him, and take back the throne.


**Acknowledgements: I would like to say thank you to all my readers and their continued support through these books. Without all of you cheering me on, I do not know where I would be. I would like to thank my AP Euro teacher for helping me with this project and the history, (I so cleverly changed to my will), behind this book. I would like to give my warmest thanks to my Beta, Samantha, who has stuck by my side in the darkest hours when I needed a friend rather than a editor. I would also like to send a hearty hug of gratitude to my other Beta, Chloe, for simply saying: "Look, life sucks, Felicity. But you're writing doesn't have to, too." And I would like to give my last thanks to you, my dear friend who is reading this book right now, Emery, his parents, and all his friends owe their lives to you. Thanks everyone! :) Love, Felicity **

**Part 1: The Child King**

"_**Let Him who moves the world, first move himself." **_~Socrates

_**Fire to Ashes **_

"_**In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return to the ground; for out of it thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Genesis 3:19 **_

The great castle began to crumble as bricks and windows were broken and fire erupted from within the courtyard. Each brick fallen marked a dream broken by a citizen, and each man killed was the marker of the tumbling Kingdom that once rose so tall. Screams of children trembled through the burning air as men with swords traced with fresh blood, let loose their vengeance and cruelty onto the innocents. The great sky above the towering spirals of the King's palace harshly rumbled, but even the mighty Gods in heaven could not stop this. They, themselves, were trapped and guarded. The once swept cobble-stoned streets were now drenched with blood, blood of so many… There were bodies lying openly in odd and miscellaneous places. Some hung from roofs with poles crudely shoved through them, while others were slopped in piles and many hanging from the tops of buildings.

Children cried for their mothers, only to be slapped and beaten to their weak knees. The very people of Argos were everywhere, running and slipping from the men who hunted them. It was not only the people's fear that drove them to grief, but a certain eternal sorrow that hung over the people. A sorrow that dug into their very souls and struck at their hearts with a deep and wretched pain. They had no hope of the dawn of the following morn or the lovely sunset of that dusk. They had simply given into the never-ending night of horror and fear. They had realized that the savior had finally fallen and the war was lost. They were alone in their darkness.

At the top of the cliff, which overlooked the city, stood a man with his hands clasped behind his back. A smile seemed permanently pressed there like writing inscribed onto iron. His boots were hardly scraped with blood, and his clothes seemed to be the work of heaven. He wore no chainmail as if he presumed he would not need armor, and his sword was glossy from lack of use. A cape fluttered out from behind him like a flag of some lost country, the color red which stood out in the darkness of that day. It glimmered in the lights of the burning city and seemed to fade in and out like fire itself. A large golden scythe was beautifully imprinted onto the silk of the cape, shimmering like hot coals in the sun. A single drop of gold seemed to hang from the scythe, despite the beauty of the majestic cloth; it was only a mask for the terror it brought to every burning city in Greece. The scythe represented the weapon of Cronos, a sign of rebellion and death. The fall of the Gods.

"Those who wish to burn, will burn, Perseus," the man said with a sickened grin. His golden eyes seemed to glow like a mountain when the sun first touches it in the morn, fresh and clean. But something ancient and evil lingered in those eyes, the eyes of the King of Chaos, as he was called, Cronos. They looked as if he had a slice of hate for every child, woman, and man in that city. "And your city, once great and vast, now will burn and become the ashes that it was made out of. Oh, I swear of it, Perseus, your father and the other gods will pay heavily for what they have done. I will rule it all, my son, and you shall become a name that is forgotten and lost like chaff of wheat to the wind. You shall lose your importance to this great continent and I will be the one who remains, while you have fallen to the wayside." His words were deep and powerful, like something that was beyond time, beyond death and life. As if it could have shaken the very foundations of the world's form and made the waters move in ways that Poseidon, himself could not bring the seas to.

Two men followed suit behind the man on stallions. They rode up beside the man to either side of him, both looked upon him with fear, yet admiration shined just as brightly within their eyes. "King Cronos, sir, we have secured Argos. Shall we move onto Athens?"

"Yes. Bring me the Queen. I want the Queen alive and untouched by the men, do you hear my words? If she is harmed or scratched or beaten to the slightest degree, I will slice my own sword through your innards." The men winced at their master's words, but reluctantly nodded.

As the two horsemen rode off into the wilderness that lined the cliff, Cronos turned to view the city one last time before he raised his fist to his face, looking down at the newly placed ring on his finger of the rearing horse of Argos. "Inevitably everything burns. Everything."

**Ten Years Later **

Delena had always begun the tale with the man who was called the Child King. It opened onto the birth of a sweet, little babe born on the day of Poseidon. The day where sea and sky touched perfectly and the horizon disappeared, becoming one with the Earth and Heavens. She said that the day the King was born the sky shook as the Gods even knelt to the babe. He was said to become the most powerful man in the Kingdom, his throne perhaps being one of the most influential in all of Greece, but evil had a different plan for the little Child King. He was in grave danger from the very birth of his existence, his mother and father desperate to save him, had turned to a witch. She put a spell over the little King to feign death. But he lived, his parents agonized to watch him grow up near them but untouchable like the sun, sent him away to a quiet settlement outside of their kingdom The babe grew from a quiet and reserved child to a man of great courage. But all along evil had been lingering throughout the Kingdom, bringing down the child's mother and father and murdering those whom he had loved. The man grew to be strong, furious, and full of anger and vengeance. He grew almost to the size of the Gods and came to the burning Kingdom of his mother and father, seeking the evil that had brought his home to ruin. The Child King rose up and took his father's most beloved weapon and he had slain the evil that had befallen upon his Kingdom.

Emery and Jason, two young boys at the time, had reveled in the beautiful words of the story. They craved for the delicious ending to the wretched villains that fraught the hero and his friends. Since the time of Emery's birth he valued the tale like it was his own destiny. In some respects, perhaps it was his right to. He lived in the era of the Darkness, when Luke and his horrifying followers ruled.

The fair country, Greece, was ruled under retributions and crushed beneath the reign of King Luke. Luke was a cold and hard man. He had made his way onto the throne through deceit and lies, but there he sat,King of the fools and drunkards. He sat above them all like he was a god. In, more ways than one, he was higher than the Gods. He was a man of great military skill and battle, but his heart was cold and evil like that of the dark souls of the demons themselves. He lacked something within himself that was vital to humanity and to the humanity of the gods. He had no heart. He was a dead man that ruled our country. It had begun with the Fall, when inner circle of the old High King was invaded by a silent enemy, one that had been with the King since they were both children. He was a sovereign prince of the Kingdom and the best known friend to King Perseus. His name was Prince Charles the Betrayer and he took a knife to the Kingdom's heart, bringing it down with collateral damage. Then had come the murders. The Raids as they were called by Lacitus, the group who called themselves _L. _They were a vast group of thieves, cutthroats, and a hodgepodge of criminals. The inner core of their circle had been a group of elite military men all cut from the same cloth as the High King's Army. They had proclaimed that for them was the victory of the war, and despite the greatest and finest trained men in the King's army, Lacitus won and victory rained upon them as numerous as the stars in the night sky. King Ly, the old King's uncle, had been one of masterminds of Lacitus' greatness. He had wished for the Kingdom to fall and his power to be restored back to him, but rather than receiving his due payment from Luke, he received his death in a glass of wine at a feast celebration the following year.

Luke, then, out of the sheer evil of his heart took the young and lovely queen, Annabeth of Athens and Crete, since her father and husband's untimely deaths in the Great War, and betrothed her. She was High Queen, but her tortures that she endured for the last days of her life were agonizing and she fell into death's hands within the first cycles of their marriage. No one cried, but everyone mourned the loss of the queen. She had been one of the last flames against Cronus and Luke. She galloped into the War, leading on the back of the famous chestnut warhorse she always rode upon, and led a fleet of at least 500 men into the King's territory. Men said that at seeing the queen's entrance their spirits soared and for one glorifying moment they saw victory in sight, before the King was proclaimed dead and the soldiers screamed for blood and were killed beside Perseus. Annabeth, herself, fell to her knees beside the King, and many who lived to tell the tale say that they both had tears in their eyes and the young King had professed his secret love to the queen. They said that for one a solitaire momentous second, the sky which violently stormed for days and weeks and months, calmed and the sun dawned through the clouds shining upon the King.

The Gods themselves remained quiet and silently fearful that the Titans were unleashed. Father Zeus was locked within chains in Tartarus, unable to break himself free to save his people and his own daughter, Lady Thalia Grace, from the War. She, too, was taken with the great spew of blood. The other Gods, like Athena and Aphrodite went into hiding and Poseidon fought to free his brother with untamable anger, but he, as well, was thrown into chains and shackles. Lord Hades, the only Father god allowed to remain from the restraints of the Titans, was put under constant vigilance, in case he struck out against the new authority of his father, Cronus. Olympus was in debris and ruins, the heavenly palaces were burned and turned to dust. There was no hope for the Gods, the Kingdom, and the people. It was as if the great bricks of the Kingdoms had fallen to nothing but ashes.

Since Emery and Jason's birth, Delena had taught her sons the codes and morals by which men should live by. She was a strict mother, capable of very cruel words and spinning stories to haunt the boys into their dreams. In the same palm, she loved her children, she wanted them to prosper and save the burned Kingdom. She believed with every fiber in her that they would, some day in some distant year, long after she was gone and dead, that they would rise up and take back the High Kingdom and all its glory. It was her only solace in her life that her boys would become more than men, but heroes of the nations that they were born to lead.

On the cold and lonely nights in the Olympian Peaks, where the small settlement, Bearington, laid, their mother would gather them against her bosom and tell them the tales of the heroes old and young who led revolutions of light and epiphany. It was not a matter of how dismayed the children were the stories would lighten their hearts and give their young and darkened minds hope. They were simply children yearning, _needing _to hear that they would live in a place where war did not wage above their heads between titan and god. But they could not go on forever that way, Delena knew it, as did the boys. "You were both born to be Kings, Emperors, heroes, and _hope_, my sons. Hope for this dying country,**"** she told them one night before they lay in their beds.

She turned to Emery, the eldest of the duo. His curls were beginning to spiral out of control into a mess of gold and blonde. They were streaked with the sun's kiss and lightened with the silver of the moon, but his small face was already beginning to form the signs of a strong jaw. His mouth sculpting into a line of amusement with his lips delicately pointed like his mother's and his eyes… By the Gods, his eyes… His eyes were those of his grandfather's. They were framed by a wide and pointed eyelid that seemed to be crinkled at the edges as if he smiled much, but the color was like the sea. It was the greenest green like when the dawn of the morning sun touched down upon the first tips of the waves. They were filled with the stormiest specks of grey that lit with the fire of vengeance, spiraling into a whirlwind of green and grey. His cheeks were beginning to narrow and form so that his cheekbones were high and strong like iron formed under the flame of Hephaestus. "My dear son, do you know of your own namesake?"

"Mother, I do not care for a story of the man who earned the name of Emery." His smile touched his lips. The smile was that of his father's, charming and modest.

"It is no story, Emery. It is simply a phrase by which you are obligated to fulfill. 'The strength to hold mountains.'" Delena's brown eyes rolled over Jason; he sat reserved in the corner of the room, reading an old volume on the lost empires.

He was growing into a man of handsome stature, as well. His long and lanky arms were forming into lean instruments of stealth and speed. His blonde hair was in slight disarray, as usual. Though he had inherited the strong jaw and determined facial structure his eyes shined through the darkness of the drafted room like newly polished gems in the rough. They were the brightest blue, shimmering like velvet beneath the dim light of the candle. They were like the night sky with glitters of stars within them, containing every ounce of knowledge within him. He had inherited his father's authoritative face that seemed to radiate a powerful and demanding aura, even if the boy did not wish to show his power. He would be the most powerful boy in the nation, he would make prophecies of greatness fall to dust with the enormity and abundance that he would bring to the small settlements forming across Greece.

"Emery simply wants to know the facts, Mother, that will make him seem more appealing to the ladies of Bearington." Jason's chuckle was a broad and brassy sound that seemed to echo in the darkness of the room, filling it with a happier presence. Emery's eyes narrowed at his brother, the grey becoming heightened and glowing like liquid fire. His lips flicked at the edges as if he wished to smile at Jason's assertion, but he held-fast, trying with all willpower to laugh.

"At the very least, brother, I able quite well with the women of Bearington, unlike you, who confines yourself to your books." His voice seemed to run smoothly like liquid silk poured over water.

"At the _very _least, Mother is the solitary woman who will ever be of the able to find you charming, so you speak." Jason's blue eyes glittered like the clear _Mare Nostrum. _

"That's quite alright, Mother is the most beautiful lady of the entire land. She will always hold a place in my heart. My goodness, Jason, in the Gods' name why would I ever do such a thing as to replace mother with a maid?"

Delena sent her son a cold glare that seemed to silence him. "In the respect of your mother, Emery, you do no such thing as to tell lies. You will leave just as Jason will and you will both find maidens that mean much to you. It is in the natural order of life."

"Do you see it now, Ry? You are still a child, in the great scope of the natural order." Jason's laugh resonating once again through the fragile walls of the house.

"Why not simply show you what I will do to the skin of your hide if you say one more attacking statement, brother," Emery said with a teasing tone as his hand went for his sword on the table. It was an old and ancient weapon used by a retired soldier of the High King's Royal Army;Emery knew the man and liked him well enough. The weapon itself had once been fine, carved from a beautiful piece of celestial bronze, and the hilt was formed with two massive waves clashing into one another. The artwork had been masterfully done by the work of the greatest artesian in the land. The blade was scuffed and worn, but it still had a pulsing beat of life that seemingly still yearned to fight and breathe in the hand of its wielder.

"I will simply pull my own sword on you. We both are in wisdom of who would become victorious in this fight." Jason began to say that he would gain the glory of the lands and become the King of the Gods and even mighty Jupiter would look upon him with favor.

Delena narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms, their frail and delicate muscles looked tensed. "You will do no _such _thing, do you understand me?" Her voice was powerful beyond all things. It made Emery and Jason both turn to their mother with aawestruck look pasted onto their faces. "You're father built this house, and I will _not _have swordplay committed within its walls. And before the intrusion, Jason, I was speaking to _Emery_." She snapped crudely at her youngest son. The younger of the duo seemed to melt and look away from his mother in embarrassment. "Emery, your name was given to you for a reason. You were meant to hold something far more valuable than the mountains. You were meant to carry a single ideal that will light each and every man's home in all of Greece. It is hope, my son. The Ideal of Hope."

It was the way that his mother spoke of hope to Emery, that he was seemingly, for once in the entirety of his life, at a lack of speech. Hope had been so well-rotted away from the people, that it was of no longer a thought that crossed their minds. Hope was too much to believe in at the time of Luke. Children lived in a city without mothers to wipe away their tears that streaked down their grimy faces. There was no hope in this nation, how did Delena expect such a thing out of him. Emery was a man that believed in the cement things of life, the realistic morals that held in the current days. The Gods were lost in their own chains and prisons, by the Gods, there was nothing to hope for. If there was one shining light the nation had, it had been Queen Annabeth of Athens, but in the last spring, her blood had been spewed like all the monarchs that refused to bow to Cronus and Luke. There would be no hope. Not until a man came from the depths of Hell and split apart the grounds, rising to the very occasion and struck down Luke.


End file.
